Southeast Texas is one of the most underrated musical regions in the world. It is indisputably the birthplace of zydeco and screwed hip-hop, and some have argued that is the birthplace of rock and roll, with Houstonian Goree Carter's 1949 single "Rock Awhile" as the first rock and roll record. (And prior to that, tragic Fifth Ward-bred teenager Hersal Thomas invented the piano style that came to be known as "boogie-woogie"; his innovations continued to echo right down through the birth of rock.) Texas City's Charles Brown was an enormous influence on the young Ray Charles, and also composed two of America's most enduring holiday classics in "Merry Christmas Baby" and "Please Come Home for Christmas." Houston's Amos Milburn was another piano-pounder Charles loved, and Milburn was the biggest name in R&B in the late '40s and early '50s.

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During the mid '50s, Johnny Guitar Watson, Joe Guitar Hughes, Albert Collins, Little Joe Washington, Johnny Clyde Copeland and Lightnin' Hopkins were living a few blocks from each other in Third Ward. In the early and mid- '70s, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell and Lucinda Williams were all knocking around the Montrose/downtown folk scene. In "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," the Geto Boys had the first respectable single from the South to break big nationally. (By "respectable," I mean not by Vanilla Ice or 2 Live Crew.) Today, Houston's hip-hop scene dominates Texas and is second only to that of Atlanta in the states of old Dixie.

While Northeast Texas trumps Brazoria in country music, any region that can count George Jones - the greatest honky-tonk singer of all time - among its number is not doing too bad. Beaumont can also claim Mark Chesnutt, Tracy Byrd and Clay Walker. For its part, Port Arthur is not just the home of UGK and Janis Joplin, but was also instrumental in the evolution of Cajun swing and country, in much the same way Creoles fused rural sounds with more modern ones in Houston and invented zydeco. No rock band from Texas has ever been bigger than ZZ Top, no group - period - has been bigger than Destiny's Child, no Texas film at least in part about music has done better than Urban Cowboy, few black-owned record labels have been more successful than Houston's Duke-Peacock and Rap-A-Lot. No white jazz pianist was ever better than Peck Kelly, no song ever written was more magical than Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" and no dude was ever badder than Johnny Guitar Watson. While Austin might get all the cool points in the national eye, no region of Texas has accomplished more than Houston/Beaumont. We just aren't quite as good at bragging about it. Previously"Palo Duro": The Panhandle"Trinity": The Metroplex and Northeast Texas"New Texas": Austin and the Hill Country"Rio Grande": South Texas, including San Antonio, Corpus Christi and El Paso